Inteltrends: Burma Report 19-OCT-2010

Burmese and Kachin troops surrounded each other last night and early this morning in three different places in Kachin State, northern Burma. This has happened after the military regime recently labeled the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) an insurgent group following a bomb blast, according to sources close to the events.

Fresh gold price highs and lows failed to hamper trade in Rangoon on both sides of the transaction table, merchants said yesterday. Although the gold price on the Burmese market rose to a record high of 672,000 kyat (about US$672) per tical (about 16 grammes) yesterday, the market was still strong, according to traders in Rangoon.

The proxy party of the Burmese military regime, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), has been reportedly campaigning for Muslim votes using the slogan, “For Freedom of Muslims, Vote USDP,” in western Burma’s Arakan State.

The announcement on Monday by the chairman of Burma’s Union Election Commission (EC) that no media or photography will be allowed inside or around polling stations on Nov. 7, the day of Burma’s general election, will inevitably lead to vote-rigging, several local journalists and Burmese politicians have said.

The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), backed solidly by the military government, appears to be doing better in its election campaigns in the country than in the cities, according to sources from inside Shan State.

Ongoing recruitment campaign of anti-Naypyitaw Shan State Army (SSA) ‘South’ can unintentionally help the cause of the ruling military junta, especially the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), according to border watchers on the Thai-Burma border and elderly people in Shan State East. “It can also encourage people to give votes to the USDP instead giving them to ethnic parties especially to the Shan party if force is used,” a border resident said. “Local villagers are unaware of the election process and they also don’t know much about the political parties. They just think that the Shan party and the SSA ‘South’ are the same like the junta and USDP is the same, though the latter has declared opposition to the elections.”

The new chief of Burma’s intelligence department has said that a major shake-up will see the unit tightening security and clamping down on flows of information. The department will use the tactics of Burma’s former intelligence chief Khin Nyunt, who headed the now-disbanded Directorate of Defence Services Intelligence (DDSI) before he was purged in 2004. It then became Military Affairs Security (MAS), but, say analysts, lost much of its strategic cunning.

For the first time in the 16-year ceasefire, Burma’s military rulers publicly blamed the ethnic Kachin Independence Army (KIA) for the latest bomb blast in northern Burma, calling the KIA an “insurgent” group.